Posted
by
Zonk
on Wednesday December 08, 2004 @12:59PM
from the that's-one-way-to-get-your-point-across dept.

OhioJoe writes "MSNBC is reporting that China has banned a soccer game that depicts Taiwan as independent. Violators are threatened with $1200 fines. From the article: "The game, 'Soccer Manager 2005', contained content that harmed China's sovereignty and territorial integrity and violated Chinese law, the Xinhua news agency reported on Tuesday."

This is not an isolated case. Back when Windows 95 was released, Microsoft had problems in India because the timezone worldmap (when setting date & time) wouldn't highlight Kashmir as part of India. To deal with that problem, they just removed country highlighting for good.

They'll probably just release an updated version of the game without Taiwan and move along.

Well, some countries are very sensitive about such issues. Even people can be very sensitive about it. Take this recent example: You know that some Arab countries insist on using the name "Arabian Gulf" to call whan we know as "Persian Gulf". Recently, after mentioning this second name in some national geography publications, a large group of Persian weblogs and sites helped making a google bomb. Try searching for "Arabian Gulf" in google and select the first results and see it for yourself.

Anytime an American citizen bitches about how America (or should I say Amerikkka) is become a facist dictatorship under the Bush Dynasty, I should refer them to stories like this. Sedition (which is essentially how Chinese authorities see this game) has long been unprosecutable in the United States, whether it is officially restricted by the Constitution or not.

We the People have more power than many of the more hysterical among us admit. The Chinese people have far less than most of us who grew up in the West realize. The prospect of a country with a billion-strong populace subservient to a fascist oligarchy scares the hell out of me. It should scare you too. Do what you can to introduce the Chinese people to the benefits of liberty, or I guarantee you China will be far more formidable and righteous a foe than the Soviet Union ever was.

> This is still a country with a Communist government (modified, granted, but still not democratic) who has never recognized the independence of Taiwan, who
blocks its citizens from portions of the internet at the national level, and brutally rolled over demonstrators in Tienaman (sp) square. What do you think they would go?

This is a country with a modernizing government who has never recognized the breakaway rebellion in the Taiwanese province, who protects its citizens from superstition on the Internet at the national level, and who defended the people against an uprising in Tienanmen square.

It's all in how you look at it. Mao was only half-right. Political power not only flows from the barrel of a gun. Reality itself flows from the barrel of a gun.

> To those who say that economic capitalism leads to democracy, we'll just have to wait and see. I'm not holding my breath.

When the Russian socioeconomic system collapsed, Russia tried freedom - and descended into anarchy before reverting to "managed democracy".

When the Chinese socioeconomic system was on the verge of collapse, China adopted policies which placed them on firm ground as the world's first stable fascist state. As a result of this decision ("It is glorious to be rich!"), its leaders remained in power, the Chinese middle class continues to grow, and standards of living continue to rise.

As for America, slouching towards its own socioeconomic collapse (largely brought on by unsustainable entitlement spending and a colossal trade deficit), China is merely the beta test site, from which we can learn what works and what doesn't, as we modernize our political system.

And speaking as someone who lives in America, I'll take the Chinese solution over the Russian solution any day.

You know, I'm not very fond of China's Human Rights Record, but people need to stop citing this ad infinitum. The Chinese could just as well talk about how we killed our own citizens during the Kent State protests during the Vietnam war. The scale at Tiananmen square was clearly far larger; however, the protests were far larger as well (at their height, over a million people strong).

Furthermore, the Chinese did not "roll over" protesters during the Tiananmen square protest. The protestor in the famous footage actually stood his ground there for half an hour before an onlooker came and pulled him away. Noone was killed in the square, either; however, of the million or so protesters, conflicts with armed troops in the surrounding streets led to several hundred deaths.

Lastly, the motives of the protesters are often misrepresented. The initial group which started the protests (students and intellectuals) were pushing for further democratization reforms of the country. However, the largest numbers of protesters were urban workers, who thought that the reforms had gone *too far*; they were both united under the banner of stopping corruption. The main song sung during the protests was "The Internationale", a pro-socialism pro-workers unity song. The main problem in negotiating with the protesters was that there were so many different agendas of different groups (the government actually *was* actively negotiating with them). Gen. Sec. Zhao Ziyang was the leading force in the negotiations, while premier Li Peng wanted a crackdown to avoid the country returning to the chaos of the cultural revolution.

China is probably banning this game because if your going to prohibit recognization of Taiwanese independence, you must make sure you cover all the bases. We're hearing about it now because it is affecting a computer game, but I'm sure that extends to any form of mass media.

However, this game has a number of errors. I quote from the article:

[The game is a C]omputer sports game that classifies Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau and Tibet as countries

Get real. Macau and Hong Kong are not independent countries, and Tibet hasn't been one for fifty years. The only country there that has some international standing is Taiwan, and that's by virtue of the United States assistance. This game is another case of designers that didn't bother to check their facts, or were intentionally trying to piss of the People's Republic of China. If China wouldn't ban it based on Taiwan, your damned right they'd ban it based on Tibet, and probably just laugh at the notion of an independent Macau. I am certainly not endorsing the actions of China, and regard the invasion of Tibet as a travesty, but sometimes people have to respect political realities.

I am currently taking classes from an online school, and one of my fellow class mates is currently residing in China. We were just speaking about the "One China" plan which has much to do with this. Here is a quote from her:

"Thats basically it, china wants the money from taiwan, and america doesnt want china to have it, so thats why america keeps siding with taiwan and selling them weapons, china hates that. China wants to do to taiwan the same thing they did to hong kong. All together i think its just that the chinese want more power...dont get me wrong, they're still a developing country and a big portion of its citizens live poverty. China builds up as much as they can city by city, starting with beijing and working their way over, so they can still classify themselves as a "developing" country. Thats how they get to pollute so much more than other countries. The air quality here is VERY bad, almost everyday is foggy, and thats not just humidity, its dirt, and debris, and lots of smog. They dont have smog restrictions on any of their vehicles. i'm betting there will be a "China-sized" hole in the o-zone by the year 2030. If China had to abide by the international pollution treaties or whatever, there would be a huge halt in production because they have so many diesel trucks going everywhere. So they wanna get taiwan, before they become classified as, "Developed", so they dont have to slow everything down... And by America standing by Taiwan, thats thwarting their plans. And now china is starting to get even more peeved, because Bush is letting the dollar sag, and china and america have a "deal" where the dollar is always worth 8 times more than the chinese yuan. And as the dollar decreases so does their currency. but they still have to pay the same price for all of our exports."

It is kind emotional unacceptable to claim Taiwan an independent country. My grandfather resisted Japanese invasion when he was young. Several of his brothers died during that war. My roommate's grandfather was born in Taiwan, fought with Japanese in Taiwan during the 1930's and 1940's. At last, we got Taiwan back after we beat the Japanese in WWII. And now some of the Taiwan politicians claim they are Japanese and claim Taiwan an independent country. It's outrageous.

We Chinese are peace people. We don't have too much ambitious. We enjoy our food and tea. But we don't like Japanese grab our land, or some "want to be Japanese".

I am not a communist, I don't like communism, we Chinese people don't talk about it much anymore, though US government classify China as a communism country. But I love my country, my nation, just as you guys love yours. I won't allow my country broken. We won't, just like US won't allow the southern separate from the Union, and Canada won't allow Quebec claim independence.

There is always culture difference between portions of a country, but this doesn't mean the country should be broke into parts.

>When the Chinese socioeconomic system was on the verge of collapse, China adopted policies which placed them on firm ground as the world's first stable fascist state. As a result of this decision ("It is glorious to be rich!"), its leaders remained in power, the Chinese middle class continues to grow, and standards of living continue to rise.

Funny, I had never before thought of it. But you _are_ right. By the definition of a fascist system, China seems to be much closer to that than communism.

Nationalism, market economy with strong government influence, highly authoratic government. All match perfectly, and only autocratism is something that the definition of communism does not exclude.

This really has nothing to do with love, but rather politics. I am also from China and have relatives living in both China and Taiwan. The issue has never been whether Taiwan is a part of China, but rather if Taiwan is a part of the People's Republic of China. And the answer is an emphatic NO. Taiwan independence movement occurred because Taiwan currently has no status. They cannot be a part of the UN, cannot sign trade agreements, and only a dozen countries in the world recognize them and have diplomatic relations with them. That is not fair to the millions of people living in Taiwan. But likewise it would not be fair for anyone to ask them to throw away their freedoms and liberties to join a post-communist fascist state. So the people of Taiwan is stuck between a rock and a hard place. One way out is to declare independence and claim themselves as a country. Of course, then PRC won't like that. I love to see the unification of China one day. But I would rather die than to see it occuring by the annexation of Taiwan by an undemocratic China. Democracy first, then unification. The problem is that people in China are apolitical (after being disenfranchised for so long you would be too), so no one worries about the politics of unification, but rather the emotions and economics of it.

Since you're an expert, answer one question: Why should any country who believes in the human rights of freedom of speech, religion, assembly and press have anything to do with a nation that does not? It seems to me that the US and Europe claim to support human rights, but only when it doesn't hurt profits.

And China is far from sustainable: The pollution problems there are rampant and growing worse.

As the presidency of Taiwan, Jacky Chan said my words, "the biggest joke in the world."

Come on . . . that was taken out of context and you know it. The presidency of Taiwan was not what Jackie Chan was referring to. He was referring to the presidential election process during the last election. After the results were announced the losing major opposition party appealed to the Taiwanese Constitutional court to nullify the election because of alleged impropriety. I was in Taiwan during this time.

This is not that different from the Florida event in the US that happened during the 2000 presidential election (Which I will admit was quite a fiasco).

Please don't spread misinformation about the Taiwanese electoral process . . . its much much much more democratic than the mainland Chinese governmental process.

I was born in Taiwan and have very close ties there because my sister and my entire extended family are still there. We all follow the Taiwanese politics, both in international as well as domestic issues, very closely.

There are quite a few things I would like to address here. First off, my family has been in Taiwan for more generations than we can count. My grandmother lived under the Japanese rule when she was younger and she has told us many stories from that time. In fact, as many older Taiwanese people are now coming out to say, the Japanese treated us fairly and equally in almost everything. They were willing to provide education to the mass, allowed us to run our own business and even help the economy as long as they were respected as the government. They were not oppressive but rather taught the Taiwanese to embrace our own identity as well as theirs. The only thing they prevented us from was the government. As far as I can tell, you know nothing about the way the Japanese people treated the Taiwanese. Additionally, no one is claiming to be "Japanese" in Taiwan. We are not "Chinese." We are not "Japanese." We are Taiwanese.

Secondly, the Chinese government had long lost control of Taiwan, even before WWII. The native Taiwanese can not even recall the last time China had any established governing power in Taiwan. We remember the Dutch; we remember the Spaniards; we remember the Japanese. But as far as the native Taiwanese are concerned, we did not have any long standing ties to mainland China before Chiang Kai-Shek and his party came over. Even then, we only embraced them because they looked like us and spoke our language. They were "our" people. The newcomers claimed that the Japanese were evil when in reality, they were worse than the previous government. They depreciated OUR currencies against their own and sent our population into poverty, simply so they could be rich with what little they came over with. They killed our educated people. They suppressed the voices that questioned them. They changed everything to their advantage. They took our land, took our money, confiscated our wealth and intimidated us by force. And now we realize that half the people that came over weren't even educated or skilled in anything. It is only recently that people are speaking up. Before this past decade, we lived in fear of being taken and killed in the middle of the night. Because of this, we are acknowledging that the Japanese were better than the so-called fellow "Chinese."

Don't you dare equate this situation to that of the US Civil War or Quebec separating from Canada. If anything, this resembles the American Revolution. (I am very knowledgeable of American history.) The Taiwanese are nothing like the mainland Chinese in culture or thoughts. And don't you dare claim that we are the "same" people. If that is the case, then Singapore should also be part of China.... In fact, didn't all of eastern Asia come from China? That means the Japanese, Koreans, Thais, Vietnamese, etc. are all "Chinese" too.

As for Jackie Chan's statement... why doesn't he take a look at the American election and call it a joke? At least the Taiwanese president won by majority. In fact, has Jackie Chan listened to the voices of the his fellow people in Hong Kong who are protesting against the Chinese government and in support of Taiwanese independence?

It's a bad idea to suggest to a crowd of Brits that England should just get the hell out of Ireland. I mean, why not make it simple and just let each country have their own island, right?

While you're not entirely wrong, as an American you are really really not allowed to say this. Why? Cos Americans funded a lot of terrorism against the British mainland (NORAID) and we really haven't forgiven a lot of you for that. And in the current climate with America being all "ooh terrorists are threatening us, we must pin down the whole world", we're just not in the mood for that talk coming from you, ok? Particularly when all protestations to your government to cease funding the IRA was met with a deaf ear.

Think what your reaction would be if someone in a bar suggested that the middle east was none of your business and you deserved the Sept 11 attack for interfering in other people's business.

Are you an idiot that lives in the US? You try to sound so worldly yet come off as pathetic on even nearby domestic issues. Little wonder regarding the break between red and blue states.

New Mexico and Colorado residents would rejoice at this plan. Californians would get utterly shafted, certainly not enjoy the run they have.

West of New Mexico (meaning Arizona, not New Mexico) would exclude Colorado. California would turn to shit without the water rights. Your industrial prices would skyrocket alone, not to mention the tax burden from having to build distillation plants and nuclear reactors to fuel the process to get clean or unsalted water. Alaskan oil reserves would still substantially go to the east, because you wouldn't have broken up the oil market, only rewritten the national boundaries in a feable attempt for economic and political prowess. Hell, residential water treatment would turn to crap so fast the popular uprising would undermine your economy for 10+ years.

Further, you would cut off the major market for California farming, which is hugely dependent on out of state water supplies. Your tax revenue, while huge, is largely due to you being an economic powerhouse because of outside spending and investment. You confuse the potential and location of California with independence; they are definitely not one and the same.

Further, there would be little stopping further fragmentation, as Oregon and Washington would realize their position to secede and join the eastern states, which would surplant California as the gateway to the Pacific. The economic growth and expenditure to those states would be huge. Right now, those 2 states compete against the larger land mass of California. Hell, with the trade agreements, Mexico production and development would be catalyzed too.

The talk about California going on its own forgets the history of the state. You want to walk away, fine, but we, being the rest of the US, get back all we give that state as well. Quit trying to be the US's Quebec. It isn't going to happen.